If you're not yet familiar with the Gnutella network then I invite you to check out FrostWire, the open-source free client to access the Gnutella network. In the past Limewire acted as the client for that network but it had one or more back holes in it, as suspected because the data folder for Limewire contained several gigs of data for a program that only required less than 50 megs.

Anyhow, Frostwire is what you'd use these days to access that file-sharing platform.

The way that this attack works is to have physical access to the computer that you want to monitor. You would then put a "special" song in the file share with Gnutella that is globally unique and odd. If it is globally available a person can search the network as a whole for that file and the IP address of the "tacked" person is revealed in short-order. It needs to be odd so that no normal person would select the file for download, which would keep the file globally unique.

Just sharing a little "hack" that uses a type of digital fingerprinting.

Yep, well this is a type of hack that is simple enough and effective. This is posted here because it is an interesting, not because I have any desire for you to put this knowledge into use. Don't be Evil. Seriously, don't.

Cheers!
-warmfuzzy

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